EU Parliament Member: 'Everything Goes Through Your Mind'

By

Alistair MacDonald

Updated Dec. 1, 2008 2:48 p.m. ET

Erika Mann, a German member of the European Parliament, had just been seated for dinner with friends Wednesday evening at one of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel's restaurants when she heard what she thought was celebratory shooting related to the cricket matches taking place in Mumbai.

As the shooting grew louder, a waiter looked out of the window and saw the terrorists. "We need to leave this place," he shouted, Ms. Mann remembers. Ms. Mann and around 30 others were ushered into a room that was part of the kitchen. There they armed themselves with whatever they could get. Ms. Mann took a large wooden stick and a metal pan. "We were all prepared. Nothing would have worked, but as a human being you don't just want to wait around" and be helpless, she said.

Discussion: Share Your Views

More on Mumbai

Staff said the shooting was probably gang warfare. But soon reports began to come through of attacks against the Oberoi hotel and the railway station.

"Everything goes through your mind," she said. "Will you make it? What is the best thing to do? Is there anywhere to hide? Is there something to use as a kind of shield?"

After an hour and a half packed into the hot room, they were told they had to move on. They were guided from the hotel's old wing through the cellar to its new wing. Coming from the cellar, they opened the door to a large wood-paneled function room called Chambers.

"It was very strange, the door opened and there were people standing in front of us, smartly dressed in their suits, dresses, jewelry, some Arabs in their white robes, in this beautiful wood-paneled room," Ms. Mann said. "It felt like a nice beautiful party."

But the atmosphere was far from festive. Gunshots and explosions rang through the building. Ms. Mann consoled a young German woman who was worried she would never see her one-year-old son again, and a lady who had left her two young children in the hotel room.

Ms. Mann tried to call her own son but couldn't get in touch with him, so phoned a friend to ask her to find him and tell him his mother was OK.

The hotel staff kept up spirits with endless patience, reassurance and assistance, bringing cakes and water to feed the more than 100 guests who had gathered in the unprotected room. "They were always standing at the doors to guard them to make sure people felt comfortable," Ms. Mann said. "They were unarmed, and at this stage there was no military, but none of them tried to escape on their own."

At around 4.30 a.m., news came that the terrorists were moving closer to Chambers, Ms. Mann said. As the gunfire grew louder, staff began to move the guests through corridors to an underground storage space that was connected to the outside.

"It was clear they were getting close; you could hear the shooting and explosions were quite close," she said.

As the doors through which they had entered were reopened, "everybody wanted to squeeze out. It was close to panic, not real panic, but close," Ms. Mann said.

Hotel staff and Indian soldiers lined the walls of the corridor to make sure nobody fell as they fled, then took up the rear as guests moved out. Before Ms. Mann could reach the last turn, where steps would take her underground, she heard the terrorists open fire in the corridor behind her.

"I felt they were shooting at my back," she said.

Ms. Mann and 40 others had been the last of the group from Chambers to leave and make it to the stairs and eventually outside, where they were led to safety. Staff had stayed at the rear of the group.

"They all stayed behind till we had escaped. Nobody ran out with us. Maybe they still had a chance. I hope they never got killed. I have no idea," she said.

Buses had arrived, but Ms. Mann thought it would be too dangerous to get on a well-lit bus full of guests as the terrorists still roamed. So she and two others went into the street and stopped a car. The car was full of journalists from a local TV station. They took her back to their offices. Ms. Mann remembers sitting in the relative security of the offices, drinking cups of hot sweet tea and "just trying to understand what went on."

Ms. Mann is now back in Germany, but she says she carries the Mumbai experience with her. On Sunday night, while sitting in a restaurant in Hannover, she saw a group of people running outside in the rain and thought "this is not good," she said. It was fine.

"If we live in a world like this where you have globalized terrorism and you have so many tourists and business people (in crowded places), there must be something to do more to prepare," she said. "More than what we did back in India."

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.